by Denise Kao
© 2024 Denise Kao

A Day in the Clinic

The small room is filled with over a hundred people.

Elderly individuals are lined up behind young children, who stand next to women holding crying babies. College students move seamlessly throughout the crowd, triaging patients and creating some semblance of order within this chaos. There are 150 patients and 2 physicians, but somehow, the clinic is running efficiently, and hundreds are receiving the long awaited help they need.

Just a short distance away, you can find more college volunteers at an elementary school. Their main focus is to watch the children while their parents receive the medical help they need. They lead children in games, read Bible stories to them, and keep them entertained throughout the duration of their parents’ visit.

This is an example of a clinic in Honduras, a site regularly visited by the Global Medical Missions Alliance (GMMA) team on their medical missions. GMMA is a nonprofit organization that aims to connect Christian healthcare workers and meet the needs of underserved communities around the world.

During short-term mission trips, they provide care to hundreds of patients, addressing many of the primary healthcare needs in underserved communities. The team generally consists of 20-40 individuals, with two to three physicians and one dentist. The team treats over 100 patients daily, an impressive feat for a group largely made up of young students.

Dr. James Yoon, a family medicine physician, has been involved with GMMA since 2015 and has participated in multiple medical missions trips to both Honduras and Mexico. Reflecting on these experiences, Dr. Yoon explained that the team frequently encounters patients with chronic conditions such as joint pain, hypertension, headaches, and abdominal discomfort. They treat individuals across all age groups, managing cases that range from diabetes in older adults to respiratory infections in children.

While many of these conditions could be treated with common over-the-counter medications, the scarcity of healthcare access in these communities often turns manageable issues into life-threatening challenges. Physicians like Dr. Yoon work tirelessly to provide vital healthcare to hundreds of patients each day, offering resources and care that would otherwise remain out of reach.

College Students Get Involved

Rachel Park is the national student chapter coordinator of GMMA and has been with the organization since she was a student at Cornell University. When she first heard about the organization as a freshman in college, she was immediately intrigued by a club that combined her Christian faith with her career aspirations, so it was “not only a place for professional achievement but also about personal growth,” Park said.

As a premed student in a prestigious university, it is easy to get caught in the difficulties of getting into medical school. Students endure rigorous academic courses and extracurriculars to fit the mold of a well-rounded applicant. As securing a spot in medical school becomes increasingly competitive, there always seems to be more that students can do–more research, more volunteering, more clinical experience, and the list goes on.

For students like Rachel, however, the heart of a career as a physician is the ability to demonstrate sacrificial compassion to others and dramatically change their lives for the better. Above all else, she wants to be a physician that models how Jesus loves other people. Luckily, GMMA’s vision not only extends to help the underserved globally but also works to shape students to become physicians who do not lose sight of the main purpose of a career in medicine.

The Link Between Spiritual and Physical Health

There’s a lot of talk about the connection between mental and physical health, but GMMA centers on another component: spiritual health and the incorporation of lasting hope into an individual’s life.

Even without the incorporation of faith and religion, caring for spiritual health can be essential to a patient’s recovery process. “A big part of caring for a patient is reminding them what they want to live for and why they want to recover. It’s giving them a reason to live,” Park explained, and it makes sense that hope is essential throughout the recovery process. The best stories are ones in which a character overcomes impossible obstacles to accomplish their goal. Accomplishing the impossible and fighting through a difficult diagnosis is easier with the powerful force of hope.

When asked about her most memorable interaction from mission trips, Park brought up a seemingly simple case: a 16-year-old girl with a young son who was running a high fever. The girl entered the clinic on the verge of tears, terrified for her child and uncertain what to do. While the fever was easily controlled by medication, the mother’s fears were not.

As Park began to speak with her, the young mom opened up, and “she revealed that she had an abusive father and was basically raising her son alone,” Park recalled. The issues that Park encountered that day extended far beyond the child’s fever. She witnessed the years of pain in a teenager who has gone through more than many people would in their entire lifetime, resulting in hopelessness and fear for the future.

After a couple hours in the clinic, the young mom went home with a healthy child and resources to support her and her child. The local church helped to fulfill her tangible needs, but she also found an unshakable source of hope that would carry her through future challenges in her life.

“I think about her often”, Park admitted. “I wonder how she’s doing because she was younger than I was when I met her.” These medical mission trips not only serve to provide relief and healing to those without easy access to physicians, but they also serve to highlight the health disparities around the world, motivating college students to become physicians who address these needs.

Strengthening the Community At Home to Help the Global Community

Besides international medical mission trips, another main focus of GMMA is to form connections within the medical field and provide mentors for students.

Physicians are recruited to participate in mission trips, but also to speak with college students on topics such as incorporating their faith into their career, preventing burnout, and how treating a patient goes beyond resolving a diagnosis. With over 30 student chapters in the United States and more abroad, it’s evident that mentoring students for a career in medicine is a crucial aspect of GMMA’s mission.

Physicians like Dr. Yoon gladly dedicate a portion of their busy career to work with students because they recognize the importance of GMMA’s mission of providing strong mentorship in the medical field. Dr. Yoon’s career has been shaped by international mission trips, first working in China as a physician for 11 years. Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Yoon realized that he “wanted to be involved in mobilizing the next generation for missions in general,” particularly through mentoring them on medical mission trips.

Even though students are not yet able to provide medical care, Dr. Yoon witnesses how these trips transform student perspectives of their ability to impact others.

“The students initially go there thinking, you know, what can I do?” he said. But at the end of the trip, they often come to the realization that “small things can communicate love and grace better than you know.” While the ability to provide physical healing comes with a medical degree, students are empowered to impact lives now, while looking towards their future careers in medicine.

Looking Forward

In recent years, GMMA has been pivoting to create permanent solutions for many healthcare crises seen around the world. “Instead of short-term clinic visits, we try to partner with local authorities more to see what we can do to help actually improve long-term care” Park explained. This new chapter of GMMA seeks to create lasting solutions to many of the needs they witness on their mission trips.

At the end of the day, GMMA goes beyond a short-term medical mission team. It is an organization that supports and equips its members at home in order to reach the underserved around the world. As a rapidly growing college and medical missions organization, they have the honor of training and witnessing each subsequent generation of physicians continue the good work of those before them.

About the Author

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Denise Kao is a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Interventional Cardiology Department of University of Michigan Medicine. You can contact her at kadenise@med.umich.edu.

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